JUAN BAUTISTA DIAMANTE. — Spanish playwright, priest, and knight of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, prior of the convent of Morón, b. in Madrid in 1625, d. there in 1687.
He wrote some fifty plays, some in collaboration, on subjects drawn from Lope, Guevara, and Amescua. There are also compositions of a biblical or hagiographical character, or, in any case, religious ones (Cumplir a Dios su palabra, St Teresa of Jesus, St Mary Magdalene of Pazzi, The Virgin of Good Success, The Devotion of the Rosary, which shows evident traces of Calderón’s La devoción de la Cruz, etc.). His style is bombastic, his language good, and he does not lack a certain dramatic force.
Bibl.: A. de Latour, Corneille et J. B. D., Paris 1861; E. Cotarelo, J. B. D. y sus comedias, in Boletín de la Academia española, 3 (1916), pp. 272-97, 454-97. Jole Scudieri Ruggieri